PREHISTORY AND HISTORY OF EUROPEAN CONSTITUTIONAL LAW (A PARALLEL ESSAY WITH THE COURSE OF NATIONAL CONSTITUTIONAL LAW)

The authors hold that the recent history of European integration after the Second World War has been marked, similarly to what it happened during the European "prehistory", by projects of unity pursuing a social pact at continental level where economic (including monetary) and political stability should mean the consolidation of peace. From this perspective, although the projects preceeding the second war consisted of the lack of both peaceful attempts and legal basis (as opposed to the current European Union arising from the peaceful proposal submitted by the Schuman Declaration of 1950 as well as the founding Treaties of the European Communities), European "pre-constitutional" experiences provide interesting elements to better understand the weakness of the current European constitutional project. Indeed, the essay concludes that the virtues of the idea of "multispeed Europe" (to reconciling the classical dynamics of enlargement and deepening) are still less important than the great difficulties caused by asymmetries deriving from the economic Constitution (economic governance and common currency) and other substantial aspects of the "European Constitution" (both at the institutional level and in the field of fundamental rights).